Most of those open-source companies turn "evil" stories (like IBM/redhat ) seems to follow the same pattern. IMO, there is a limit of the amount of value one can extract from those venture. Trying to increase revenue beyond a certain limit will always result very bad outcome.
But i also think it's a lesson for the gaming industry. Why is something as core are a game engine, not something properly open-source and license such as QT, LLVM or GCC...
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-07-09-IBM-Closes-Landmark-Acqu...
more importantly; https://www.servethehome.com/red-hat-goes-full-ibm-and-says-...
In all seriousness, it’s just that the AGPL considers network use to be distribution and thus entitled to the source[https://medium.com/swlh/understanding-the-agpl-the-most-misu...]
This terrifies people for some reason. Basically because they want the freedom to modify open source projects and call it their own without giving back to the project that actually created it.
Anyway, it's their loss.
Honestly, go talk to your org's lawyer.
It depends on how much you're actually selling. Consider how much would it cost to hire devs to build your own custom engine? (Don't forget console support). Your game needs to pull in 20x higher than that in revenue for it to be worth the choice over a 5% rev share.
To be fair Unity is asking you to give them somewhere between 0.05% and 2.5% while Steam/Apple/etc. want 30%.
> AAA studio builds their own client and game engine, it's cheaper in the long run
I don't think it's because of the rev share. If they were able to acquire an engine which fully suits their needs for only 5% that'd would be a great deal. Unfortunately adapting an off the shelf for a AAA game might be just as expensive as building (or at least upgrading) your own engine.
Everyone takes their cut.